


vestigial

by ceruleancity



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21877450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleancity/pseuds/ceruleancity
Summary: 2016 is a year of transition. Bokuto moves to Italy, Kageyama is recruited by Chuo University, and Ushijima becomes a fixture on the national team.Meanwhile, in a seaside town in Chiba, Akaashi plays beach and tries to make peace.
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Outtakes from a holiday exchange fic.

“Tell me something,” Iwaizumi says. He leans ever so slightly into Akaashi’s personal space, though not enough to interrupt Akaashi’s sense of equilibrium. They’re in the gymnasium after school, and the sunlight through the windows floods light into the open spaces. It’s quiet except for the bouncing of balls. Some upperclassmen have stayed behind, and are passing up against the wall. 

“Anything,” Akaashi says, though absently. He’s taken the brief respite from practice to pour over careers advising pamphlets. The future is coming, sooner rather than later, and he wants to be ready. More than anything, he wants to be more certain than he is. 

“If there were a beach tournament going on out in Chiba, open to all college students, and I asked you to be my pairs partner, would you come?”

Akaashi looks up from his forms at him. “Sure,” he says. “Is there one?”

“Kageyama told me about it. It’s a big yearly thing, local. The prize money’s about 900,000 yen.”

“You’re kidding,” Akaashi says.

Iwaizumi grins. “Right?” 

“Why are you asking me? Surely Sanada-san is the better option. I’m just the backup setter.” 

“Sanada’s a good guy,” Iwaizumi says. He lays back onto the wooden floor, stretched out, the very image of relaxed. 

“Then?”

Iwaizumi tilts his head towards Akaashi. “Did you know Oikawa went abroad to Argentina after high school?”

“ _Argentina?_ No, I didn’t at all.”

Iwaizumi looks away from him again, towards the ceiling. “He told me a couple weeks before he left. We’d just graduated, and we went to our favorite ramen shop near Kitagawa Middle School to celebrate.”

“He told you only two weeks before?

“Yeah, can you believe it?”

“No.” 

“When he said the word ‘San Juan,’ I’d just drunk this huge mouthful of shoyu broth, and I spat it out all over the table.”

Akaashi chokes. 

“Got on the appetizers, the napkins, my shirt and everything.” He laughs. “Not a drop of it got on Oikawa’s face, though. It was truly devastating.”

“That’s disgusting, Iwaizumi-san.” He reaches down with his hand and instinctively wipes down the cover of one of his pamphlets; it says, Careers in Sports Journalism, and he runs his palm over the words “Sports” and “Journalism.”

“You know, it was the first time that asshole ever managed to surprise me.” Light fractures off the glass windows and into Iwaizumi’s right eye, and he shuts it, wincing. “I always knew one day we’d go our separate ways, but I didn’t think he was gonna piss off to the other side of the planet.”

One of the upperclassmen, their backup libero, accidentally spikes the ball a little too hard against the wall, and for a moment there’s a sequences of sounds: a yelp, knees skinning against the floor, hard, and a brief spell of swearing. The others laugh.

Akaashi looks to them, down to his forms, then back at Iwaizumi. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I was sad and lonely after, and I wanted to tell somebody about it.”

“Oh.” Then, after a loaded pause: “I’m sorry.” 

Iwaizumi looks at Akaashi for a moment, then bursts into laughter. He starts laughing so hard that that the entire gym echoes with it, and the older boys all turn simultaneously to stare at them. It takes him almost two minutes to calm down again. 

“You’re a good guy, too, Akaashi,” Iwaizumi says, chuckling. 

“I didn’t mean to be rude earlier. Asking you that.”

“I was truly just kidding,” Iwaizumi assures him. “Not that I didn’t miss him at all or anything, but…”

He trails off. Akaashi, tentative now, doesn’t say anything to fill in the gaps either. Eventually, Iwaizumi says, “Ask me again.”

“Iwaizumi-san.”

“Seriously,” Iwaizumi says. He smiles at Akaashi. “Ask me again.”

“Why did you tell me about your friend?”

“The other question.”

Akaashi pauses. “Why did you ask me to be your partner?”

“Because you seem like you want to think about the future,” Iwaizumi says, “but I feel like if I leave you here all summer, you’ll just wallow around in memories of the past.”


	2. Chapter 2

Before Bokuto had left for Modena the month before, he had forced the former Fukurodani group to go on a “farewell tour” of Japan. It turned out to be a ruse, to get everyone to download Pokemon Go, level up, and join him on raids across Honshu island. Pokemon was Bokuto’s obsession for the season. It was his stopgap hobby between “we’re going to win nationals!” and “we’re going to win the world!”

“You know why you’re like Mew?” he said to Konoha, who had looked horrified when informed that, in lieu of a nice two weeks at home sleeping in, eating what he wanted, and watching arthouse films, he was would be the official navigator/snack distributor/radio DJ of a two week road trip from Tokyo to Hakodate. “You’re super rare, and you’re the best!”

Konoha looked like he wanted to die. 

“The jack of all trades, master of none, is called on yet again to save Fukurodani!” Komi narrated, giving Konoha a big thumbs up. 

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Konoha said miserably to Komi. “You’re the only one with a big enough van, so you’ll be doing all the driving.” 

Komi’s face fell. Instantly. 

Suzumeda and Shirofuku planned the route, from Tokyo up to Sendai, stopping in Karuizawa and Shirakawa to rest. Akaashi spent most of the trip making sure Bokuto had his umbrella when they went out into the rain, often spontaneously, didn’t get into overly dangerous situations like wade out into the middle of dirty, seaweed-ridden lakes chasing Pokémon, or make friends with sketchy strangers at parks at two in the morning. 

Once, when they were in Karuizawa, eating chikara udon (Shirofuku had entered the special challenge—finish an extra large bowl in twenty minutes, and get it free; Washio had rolled up his sleeves, and every once in a while pulled Shirofuku’s long hair back, when it threatened to dip into the soup), Akaashi said to Bokuto, “Why Pokemon? You’ve never played any of the games before.”

Bokuto looked at him with an expression that, over the course of five years, had become his trademark response to almost anything Akaashi could possibly say to him. It was simultaneously naivety, surprise, bemusement and delight. 

“Why not?” Bokuto said. Like light off a flint, a grin flickered on his face, and it seared Akaashi’s eyes. 

“What do you mean, why not?”

“Just, why not?”

“You can’t answer a question by repeating the same thing you had said before, Bokuto-san.”

“Ah, Akaashi.” Bokuto stuck his chopsticks directly into his rice (Akaashi winced), and used his freed hand to slap Akaashi’s back, hard. Inured to the gesture, Akaashi only buckled about 15-degrees, a 45-degree improvement from when he’d first met Bokuto. “Akaashi, Akaashi. You think wayyy to much about these things. If you love something, then you love it! If you wanna do something, then you do it! I wanted to play Pokemon, and now I am. And you all are too! What’s the point in wondering ‘why?’”

“It’s important to know why you do things.”

“Is it? For who?”

“For whom,” Akaashi said. “For me. For—I like to know why my teammates play volleyball. When I get a job, I’d like to know why my colleagues are doing the work they do. I imagine they’d think the same of me.”

“Eh? Colleagues? You’re planning to get a job job? Like the boring office kind Komi and Konoha and Saru are gonna have?”

Akaashi’s chopsticks paused on their way to his mouth. A piece of omelette was still sandwiched between them. 

“I—don’t know, actually.” 

“You’re not going to play volleyball?”

“I—“

“I mean, it’s ok if you’re not! But I thought we’d play on the national team, together, Akaashi!”

The omelette was slipping, so Akaashi had no choice but to put it down temporarily on an small, emptied salad dish. 

“I don’t think I’d play on the national team regardless, Bokuto-san.”

“Aw, we talked about confidence, Akaashi! You’ve gotta—“

“I know,” Akaashi said gently. 

“So? What’re you all confused about?”

Akaashi opened his mouth to say, but nothing came out. 

“Hmm, maybe you just don’t volleyball that much?” 

“I do,” Akaashi said, instinctively. 

“Or maybe you just like something else more?”

“I don’t.”

“But either way, you have plenty of time!” Bokuto finished, having apparently not heard Akaashi at all. 

Akaashi sighed. Somewhere in the background, a buzzer delineating the ten-minute mark on Shirofuku’s challenge sounded. Komi said, “And she’s got a huge lead, with ten minutes to go! At the rate she’s going, she barely needs five!” Suzumeda said, “Shush, don’t rush her!” 

Bokuto swiveled around in his chair and shouted across the room, “Yukie, gamba!” 

“But that’s just it,” Akaashi said, to Bokuto’s back. The Fukurodani logo was emblazoned across his jacket, a dark, loud black, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. “I constantly feel like I’m running out of time.”


End file.
